


Caged

by franticatlantic



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: M/M, Trichotillomania
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 16:10:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8585134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franticatlantic/pseuds/franticatlantic
Summary: He imagines he could just tug the skin right off, expose his skull, naked and bloody, underneath.





	

**Author's Note:**

> !!! this fic contains in-depth descriptions of hair pulling and may be triggering to some with compulsive disorders !!!
> 
> this is for natalia. i really hope you like it.

Tyler twirls a lock of hair between his fingers, makes a bit on the very top of his head stand out - rigid - amidst the rest. It’s a gesture so innocent and yet so vicious to Tyler himself. It’s the sound of children chanting war cries. It’s a painting of a bunny rabbit with blood dripping from its muzzle. The blood falls to a frost-bitten lawn full of dead grass, steams in the snow as it makes a tiny red puddle.

Because to anyone else the twirling means nothing. Or something so similar to nothing as to warrant no response. To Josh it means Tyler is sleepy, to Mark it means Tyler is bored.

But to Tyler.

To Tyler it means tingling fingers and a raw scalp, the skin beneath pink and ruined.

They get to the hotel and he locks himself in the bathroom, runs twitching fingers through his hair and pulls, hard enough to imagine he could just tug the skin right off, expose his skull, naked and bloody, underneath. When his grip loosens his fist comes away with stray hairs sticking out from between his knuckles, thin little razorblades. Tyler runs them along his cheek and lets them fall onetwothreefour into the sink.

If he lets himself he’ll pluck golf ball sized holes in his hair, patches that he can’t hide unless he wears a hat at all times. It’s inconceivable to wear a hat 24/7, especially onstage, where the heat wouldn’t be able to escape. He’d suffocate up there under the blinding lights with his people watching.

And maybe Josh would pull his beanie off and see the gross dips in his head, see right through to the skin, like a magnifying glass or a pair of binoculars. Zoomed right down to the pores, where Tyler yanked the follicles out so that now nothing will grow there for a very, very long time. Or maybe ever again.

His head would look like marshland, dark islands poking up from where dead faces stared out of the murky depths of jagged shapes of water.

And maybe Josh would be fine with it, would take Tyler in his arms and tell him everything would be okay, that he doesn’t mind the way Tyler’s head looks like he was in a building fire, patches of hair burned off in grotesque formations. Maybe he’d hold Tyler’s wrists and brush his thumbs along Tyler’s hands, calm Tyler’s ever-present desire to press his fingers together and just pull until something came out, anything.

But maybe he’d be disgusted. Maybe he’d look down at Tyler and recoil, and they’d spend less and less time together until their friendship became nothing but a distant memory Tyler likes to look back on sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly nostalgic. Maybe Josh would tell Tyler he’s gross, that he can’t believe Tyler would do something like that to himself, ask him what’s wrong with him.

And Tyler wouldn’t have an answer. Because he doesn’t know.

Doesn’t know why he does this to himself, only that he must. Only that sometimes he doesn’t even think about it, finds his fingers acting on their own, twirling his hair silky soft around themselves, pulling at it like alien appendages Tyler can’t control.

Or that sometimes he knows exactly what he’s doing, but is powerless to stop it. Like his mind is on autopilot and overdrive all at the same time, twisting and pulling, each section of hair leaving his head more satisfactorily than the next, but never quite _enough._

He won’t stop until it’s all gone, his head smooth and bitten hot pink by the harsh pinch of his fingertips against his scalp, like he scheduled an appointment for a haircut from a drunken wayward hairdresser.

The last time he felt it this bad, like an itch just waiting to be scratched with a pocket knife, was before Car Radio. Mark let him do his thing, shave his hair off all in one go for the music video, and he had felt free for so long after that he almost forgot what wanting to pull his hair out felt like.

Almost.

Even though it never really goes away. It spikes when he gets stressed, of course, when he’s upset or down or anxious. But it also lays in wait until Tyler has some down time, bored with nothing else to do but put his fingers in his hair.

It’s hard to hide it, to find time to do it when there’s no one else around because there seems to always be someone around - someone from the crew or a fan or a reporter or even Josh. Josh, who he needs to hide this from, but who he also needs to tell. He is, after all, a big advocate of catharsis through performance, sharing your experiences with others in the hopes that they’ll reciprocate or - at the very least - understand.

He doesn’t need someone to offer an alternative, doesn’t need someone to tell him that they’ll get him to stop, that there’s help right around the corner because there isn’t, he won’t, and there is none. All he needs is for someone to accept him, like this, as he is. With no well’s or maybe’s or if you only’s. He’s heard that enough from himself.

So it is Josh who he needs to tell. It’s Josh who might be able to lessen the blow, to make things as right as they can be, though that might not - definitely won’t - mean perfect. If anyone, it’s Josh who’s going to accept him, take him in and kiss him. Not better. But kiss him with his fingers stroking Tyler’s head, with all its patches and missing pieces or maybe nothing at all.

Tyler grabs his razor, runs his fingers over the edges, and goes to find Josh.

**Author's Note:**

> always taking requests at my [tumblr](http://vintagetyler.tumblr.com/).


End file.
